1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of decorative jewelry items, and more particularly to an attractive jewelry rope chain exhibiting unusual visual properties.
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
Jewelry rope chain has been made for many years. Although rope chains can be made by machine, the better quality rope chains are usually manufactured by hand. While a rope chain has the feel and look of a rope, it is actually made up of a series of individual C-shaped flat link elements made from a precious metal such as silver or gold. Gold is available in at least four colors; white, yellow, rose (pink), and green. The C-shaped link elements are fastened together in a particular way, such that tightly interlinking annular link elements give the appearance of intertwining helical rope strands. A number of annular link elements are connected and intertwined together in a systematic and repetitive pattern of orientation, resulting in an eye-pleasing, flexible, and delicate-appearing chain that looks and feels like a finely braided helix.
The assembly method for interconnecting a series of link elements can be found by reference to U.S. Pat. No. 4,651,517 to Benhamou et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 5,301,498 to Chia et al., both of which are incorporated herein by reference.
Some manufacturers of jewelry use different colored gold and silver elements to enhance the beauty of the jewelry article. Examples are: rope chains in which sets of link elements of one color alternate with sets of link elements of another color; and bracelets or necklaces constructed of interconnected twisted closed loops exhibiting alternating colors along their lengths.
However, in all of the prior art construction techniques for producing rope chain jewelry, each link element is of a single solid color, texture, and pattern, e.g., each link element may be stamped from a solid thin sheet of precious metal, such as gold. Thus, for example, while an all yellow gold rope chain or an all white gold rope chain is attractive, it is otherwise uninteresting due to the monotonic nature of its unvarying coloration and/or texture along the link elements of the chain. Those prior art rope chains that do exhibit variations of colors along their lengths nevertheless are constructed of individual link elements each of which is of a single solid color, texture, and/or pattern. Other jewelry articles exhibit variations of colors along their lengths using interconnected twisted closed loops, but they are not regarded as rope chains as defined herein.
The present invention relates to a jewelry rope chain exhibiting distinctive visual properties and to related means and methods for creating distinctive visual properties in an assembled rope chain. The distinctive visual properties may be imparted to a length of rope chain assembled with link elements all of the same material, shape, configuration, texture, and/or color, or such distinctive visual properties may be imparted to a length of rope chain assembled with link elements differing in material, shape, configuration, texture, and/or color.
For example, in one aspect of the invention, a manufacturing process may be employed to produce a length of jewelry rope chain in which each link element, or a group of link elements, may exhibit a common visual property, i.e., each link element, or group of link elements may have the same surface texture, coloration, attribute, shape, configuration, or other physical appearance prior to assembly, and subsequently be altered to enhance the beauty of the jewelry article by further coloration or texturing process steps.
Thus, in addition to exhibiting unique visual properties, employing the concepts of the present invention, lengths of rope chains can be fabricated in which one of the apparent strands of xe2x80x9cropexe2x80x9d has a different visual appearance than the intertwining xe2x80x9cropexe2x80x9d strand. That is, the appearance of a rope strand at any point along the length of rope chain may not only be visually different than another point along the length of rope chain, but may also be visually different than the adjacent strand. For example, one strand may have an apparent smaller diameter than that of the adjacent strand. Or, the texture, coloration, surface reflectivity, pattern, shape, or other physical attribute of one strand may be totally distinct relative to the adjacent strand.
In another aspect of the invention, a manufacturing process may be employed to produce a length of jewelry rope chain in which each link element, or a group of link elements, may exhibit a unique visual property, i.e., surface texture, coloration, attribute, shape, configuration, or physical appearance prior to assembly, and subsequently be altered to enhance the beauty of the jewelry article by further coloration or texturing processes.
In either case, such unique visual property traits for the succession of link elements results in a more attractive, fanciful, more delicate and interesting fashion jewelry item.
It will be understood that in all of the examples of the accompanying figures and the related text, where different colors are shown and described, texture or patterns can be implied, and the terms xe2x80x9ctexturexe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cpatternxe2x80x9d could be substituted for xe2x80x9ccolorxe2x80x9d. To avoid unnecessary duplication, however, xe2x80x9ccolorxe2x80x9d will be used as exemplary of other visual properties including surface texture and patterns.
Some or all of the link elements making up the length of rope chain may be smoothly circular (e.g., annular), circular with peripheral undulations or crenels, circular with peripheral gear-like teeth, and/or may be star shaped, baguette shaped, square shaped, rectangular shaped, oval shaped, diamond shaped, heart shaped, etc. Similarly, different portions of each link element may have such different physical shapes.
As a result of the various combinations possible in the manufacture of jewelry rope chains in accordance with the present invention, a virtually limitless number of different design possibilities exist, and preferred ones of such possibilities are shown and described herein. It is to be understood, however, that all combinations of: the number of interconnected link elements in the repeated pattern along the length of rope chain; solid or portioned coloration and/or texturing; different designs of the portioned regions of each side surface of the link elements; and different physical shapes and/or visual properties of the individual link elements may be employed in the manufacture of jewelry rope chains and are contemplated as variations of the preferred embodiments specifically shown and described.